Its first presenter was Peter Dimmock. There were only four main presenters of the programme during its long history: David Coleman (who took over from Dimmock after just three programmes), Frank Bough, Des Lynam and Steve Rider. Changes in the structure of the programme during its last few years, however, meant it did not have a regular main presenter during this time.

During the 1950s sports coverage on television in the United Kingdom gradually expanded. The BBC regularly broadcast sports programmes with an outside studio team, occasionally from two or three separate locations. Production assistant Bryan Cowgill put forward a proposal for a programme lasing three hours; one hour dedicated to major events and two hours showing minor events. Outside Broadcast members held a meeting in April 1958 and Cowgill further detailed his plans taking timing and newer technical facilities into consideration. During the development of the programme, problems arose over the proposed schedule which would result in the programme ending at 4:45pm to allow the recreational programme Children's Hour to broadcast. Paul Fox insisted that the service was broadcast until 5:00pm to ensure a proper results service.[1]

Three weeks before the debut of the programme, Sports Broadcaster Peter Dimmock favoured naming the show Out and About! with Fox persuading Dimmock to agree on a new name Grandstand. Grandstand launched on 11 October 1958 from Lime Grove Studios with Dimmock as the presenter. Dimmock presented the first two editions and three weeks later, he was replaced by sports commentator David Coleman.[2] In the autumn of 1959, Grandstand was extended by an extra 15 minutes and would finish at 5:00pm every Saturday.[1]

The show was one of the most recognisable on British television, dominating Saturday afternoons on the BBC's main channel and covering nearly every major sporting event in Britain such as the FA Cup final, Wimbledon, the Grand National and the University Boat Race, as well as major international events like the Olympic Games, the Commonwealth Games and the FIFA World Cup. A Sunday edition, simply named Sunday Grandstand, launched in 1981 and ran on BBC Two. Until 1997, the Sunday edition was only broadcast during the summer months but from February 1998 Sunday Grandstand aired all year round, incorporating the Ski Sunday and Rugby Special programmes. Grandstand was not shown on 20 May 2000 as no major sporting events broadcast by the BBC were taking place. Typically, Grandstand did not broadcast when a major national event took place or if Christmas or New Year's Day fell on a Saturday.[3]

In October 2001, the head of BBC Sports and Programming Pat Younge announced plans to revamp Grandstand by placing emphasis on showing one particular sport rather than switching back to another every few minutes.[4]

In the late afternoon, with many Football League and Scottish Football League matches approaching full-time, the programme would draw to a close with Final Score. This covered not only the results from all the matches, but also gave the results of the football pools. Perhaps the segment's most famous feature is the vidiprinter, a digital device which printed out the results as they came through, with the characters in each result appearing one by one. Remarkably, only two people regularly read out the classified results on Final Score when it was part of Grandstand: the Australian Len Martin (from the first programme until his death in 1995) and Tim Gudgin (from 1995 until Final Score was separated from Grandstand in 2001 - he continued to read the classified results until 2011).

In August 2001 the Football Focus section, having been the first feature on Grandstand since 1974, separated to become a programme in its own right. This meant that Grandstand's start time was now 1300 rather than 1215.

At the same time, Final Score was also separated from Grandstand, also becoming a programme in its own right,[5] running from 1630 meaning that Grandstand only broadcast between 1300 and 1630 rather than 1215 to 1715. The half time sequence did remain within the Grandstand programme. In 2004, following the success of Sky Sports' Soccer Saturday programme featuring reports from the afternoon's football matches, the BBC introduced its own football scores programme called Score. It ran for the full duration of the afternoon's football matches, beginning at 1430, and was available as an add-on service on the Red Button until 1630 when BBC1 joined the programme and at that point Score would become Final Score.

In its final few years, the show was rarely presented from a studio and as such there was no longer a main presenter. The show tended to be broadcast from wherever the main event of the day was taking place, and the host would be associated with that feature - for example, if it was snooker then Hazel Irvine would host, if it was racing or rugby league then it would be Clare Balding, and if it was rugby union it would be John Inverdale.

On 24 April 2006, the BBC announced that Grandstand would be gradually phased out after nearly half a century,[6] due to the increasing use of interactive services and the need to meet the challenges of the digital, on-demand world.[7] This had been hinted by the dropping of the "Grandstand" title from the BBC's coverage of the major international sporting events, like the World Cup as well as that year's Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games.[8]

It was originally intended that the show's cancellation would take place in 2009; however, with little or no notice, this was brought forward to 28 January 2007.

The final Saturday edition of Grandstand was broadcast on 27 January 2007, and the last edition of all after 48 years was broadcast the following day, 28 January 2007, a short tribute to the history of the show forming its final feature. Sport still features prominently on the BBC's programme schedules on Saturday afternoon as well as on BBC Red Button, the interactive service available on digital television; Final Score is still shown when the football ends on a Saturday evening.[9]

The original theme was "News Scoop" by Len Stevens, which was used until 6 November 1971. From 13 November 1971 to 4 October 1975, another, little-remembered tune was used, composed by Barry Stoller who also composed the Match of the Day theme tune. The show's most famous theme, composed especially for the programme by Keith Mansfield, was first heard on 11 October 1975 and remained until the end of the show's run. A re-recorded version of the theme was also introduced in 1999, but complaints caused it to be quickly reverted to the original.[10]

One edition in the late 1970s saw the first few minutes of a Frank Bough-presented edition coming from the Multi-Coloured Swap Shop studio. This was because Bough was a guest on Swap Shop that morning and did not have time get to the Grandstand studio.